Wanderlust
He dropped out.
"He just wanted peace of heart and love," says Megan Moody, who befriended Dele in Perth, Australia, during his travels. "I think he struggled with the person that the money and the fame made him, and he woke up one morning, pretty much looked in the mirror and was disgusted. That was why he chose to turn his back on it."
After retiring, he flew to Arizona to live on a houseboat on Lake Powell with a group of friends, including Ahmad El Hussini, whom he met as a sophomore at the University of Arizona in 1989.
From Arizona he flew to Europe, then traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, where he owned a water-treatment plant with El Hussini. A few months later, he visited The Seychelles, a 176-
square-mile chain of islands in the Southwestern Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar.
Dele traveled through India and Indonesia, then, by the end of 1999, landed in Australia.
It was there that he seemed to find, at least for a while, some inner peace.
He arrived in Western Australia's capital city of Perth and soon discovered the picturesque beauty of nearby Fremantle.
"He saw Fremantle and fell in love with it," Moody says. "But he said, 'No, I have to see the rest of the country.' "
So Dele traveled to Sydney, where he celebrated the millennium New Year and bought himself a truck.
It was one of "those big trucks you see in the movies that they live out of, driving all over the outback with the gasoline tanks on them and the water tanks," Phillips says.
He loaded it up with a custom-made surfboard, a kayak, scuba gear, a motorcycle and camping equipment and set off on a yearlong trip around the country.
He snorkeled in the waters of Great Barrier Reef, immersed himself in the art and culture of Melbourne, motorcycled through the outback.
Finally, he ended up where he started, living in Fremantle at the head of the Swan River, a half-hour drive from Perth.
There, people didn't know who Brian Williams or Bison Dele was. In Fremantle, friends called him "Zobie," Dele's college nickname, while strangers knew him only as a kind, barefooted giant.
Odyssey
"I didn't know who he was. He was just an exceptionally tall African-American," Moody says, laughing. "He had been there three or four months, and he saw this boat and fell in love with it."
He had trekked across Australia and wanted to travel the waters surrounding it, she says.
Dele bought the 55-foot catamaran for about $650,000 early in 2000. He hired three-time world circumnavigator Jon Sanders to help him prepare the Hakuna Matata, Swahili for "no worries," for her maiden voyage under his ownership.
Every morning, Dele would stop by a little bistro, owned by Moody's friends, along the town's cafe-laden "Cappuccino Strip" to buy a glass of fresh juice.
"I was going through some dramas at that time in my life and had decided to resign from the job I was working at," Moody says. "He sort of said, 'Why don't you jump on board?' "
So Moody started hanging out with Dele, eating meals with him on the boat, and eventually decided to sail with him to Melbourne.
Dele spent about $16,000 refitting his boat with everything from DVD players and a PlayStation to custom cushions, scuba gear and spear guns.
Shortly before leaving, Sanders and Dele had a falling out. Moody says Dele was uncomfortable around the skipper, and Sanders wasn't happy with Dele's use of marijuana.
Mark Beal, who replaced Sanders after the argument, says that first trip was like a second childhood for Dele.
"He didn't have time when he was growing up, because he was consumed by basketball and the NBA," Beal says. "So he spent a lot of time in Australia skateboarding, playing video games and kicking around a soccer ball."
On Feb. 8, 2001, the Hakuna Matata left Fremantle with Beal, Dele, Moody and three others.
Among them was a last-minute addition, a German known only as Drema.
"I think Bison had met Drema on his travels around Australia, and he had run into him again in Fremantle and said, 'Hey, come down and check out my boat,' " Moody says.
The afternoon Drema arrived was the day they were leaving, so Dele invited him along.
"He just shared his knowledge and his wealth and the essence of who Bison Dele was with everyone he met," Moody says. "He was very giving."
Drema stayed with the group for the first night before bidding them farewell, jumping overboard in a quiet bay the next morning and swimming to the distant empty shore in his flip-flops, T-shirt and shorts.
They never saw him again.
Drema seemed to epitomize the type of person Dele fell in with during his travels, and the type of person he was becoming.
"He was living in the moment, completely and totally living in the moment," Moody says. "He wanted to travel and meet interesting people and be free."
Fire
"He talked all of the time," Moody says. "Sometimes you would really pay attention, while other times you would sort of switch off and do your own thing.
"He talked about his life, his experiences. He would come up with all sorts of truly weird and wonderful ideas and get excited about them."
Dele would be lounging below deck with his PlayStation when an idea would suddenly strike him - like a wet suit with webbed wings that would allow a person to be pulled into the sky like a human kite from the back of a boat.
"His mind was just amazing, it was truly amazing," she says. "We would sort of all be bouncing off each other, but he would continue on, and it would build into some great thing."
At times, Dele seemed almost possessed by his own intellect and passions, finding relaxation only when he smoked marijuana.
"He was a beautiful soul, but he seemed to carry a lot of fire with him, a lot of deep sort of fire," Moody says. "One minute he would be fine, and we would be all chatting, and the next minute he would sort of be wanting to be by himself, and he would kind of withdraw from everybody".
His friends would give him some space, and a couple of hours later he would come back rejuvenated, Moody says.
As the boat sailed in early February 2001 to Melbourne, Dele's self-journey came to a crossroads.
He received an e-mail from Jordan asking him to come out of retirement to play with him in Washington, D.C., with the Wizards.
Dele decided his new life was more important and said no, Beal says. Dele also hinted that he didn't really need the money, because he was living comfortably off the interest of the estimated $5 million on which he had retired.
The Hakuna Matata arrived in Esperance, about halfway between Perth and Melbourne, on Valentine's Day, and the group spent a few weeks there relaxing and working on the boat's failing hydraulics before setting sail.
They arrived in Melbourne about a week later. Moody says they initially had tried to continue on to New Zealand but were forced back by a severe storm.
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